It was sunny and cool when I signed in at 8:10 but the Bradley Pond trail offered a counterpoint to the pleasant weather with it's usual mudholes and the brook running down the trail, which would be noteworthy anywhere else but are the norm here. The frequent boot-sucking quagmires are occasionally punctuated by really world-class hog wallows. Almost all have bypass herdpaths and it pays to be attentive as the best option is often but not always the high side. THIS TRAIL NEEDS SOME LOVE! (A BIG thanks to whoever cut and flagged the sensibly routed bypass above the bog between the Panther Brook herd path jct and the lean-to.) But enough about that. The 'whack from the lean-to to the top was the usual thing; lower your head, close your eyes, take a deep breath and flail uoward. Repeat a few thousand times until you can look around and see nothing higher. Tho steep and thick it was mercifully short. I left the lean-to at 10:30 and summited at 11:50. The top is one of the nicer of the trailless HH. For one thing, it is very obvious when you get there that it is the top. For another, there are some pretty good views to the north, especially of Wallface and to a lesser extent Algonquin and Marcy, albeit they require some neck craning and peering through the trees. I took the ridge down on a more-or-less 240-250 degree bearing but the compass was not really needed because it was easy to keep the Santanoni massif in sight. So long as I kept inclining toward that, I could be certain of hitting the herd path. So, picking my way down through pretty much the same thick stuff as on the way up, I came out about ten minutes above the cairn for the Santanoni express. After a leisurely lunch on the ledges in the brook at photo-op rocks I was back at the car at 3:10. Only 16 left now, but they include all five Sawtooths, North River and Cheney Cobble, plus a slew of others with access issues. From now on it only gets harder. If anyone reading this is on the same trajectory and looking for company, send me a PM.
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